Big Brother Wins the Day

The latest audience figures from Nielsen//NetRatings on the Internet and Channel 4's own TV audience figures show that the recent Big Brother TV series recorded unprecedented levels of interest on both the web and TV during May, June and July.

For the first time, TV and Internet audience figures have been published together to show how when combined successfully, these two media can maximise consumer interest and provide significant audiences for advertisers. Big Brother 2002 was the most successful series ever in terms of Internet viewers, with a Unique Audience of 1.7 million people for the channel4.com website, 1.4 million of which visited channel4.com/bigbrother in July 2002. By comparison average audiences on TV throughout the series were 5.7 million, peaking at 10 million on the 26th July, the day of the final.

People who logged on from home in July spent a total of 28 minutes on the site that month. In comparison, the 640,000 people who logged on to channel4.com/bigbrother from work spent three hours and 20 minutes online in the same month - over seven times more viewing minutes.

Peaks in TV viewing coincide with the peaks in daily Internet traffic in most instances, albeit with smaller audiences on the web. The exception is Fridays, when followers of the programme preferred to watch the evictions live on TV.

By taking the six most popular pages ranked by total page views, analysis of the demographics of the online audience from Nielsen//NetRatings' media planning tool, WebRF, shows some interesting trends. For instance, whilst women aged 18-24 made up a relatively small number of individuals in the audience at 98,000 people, they amassed nearly 26 million page views just on these six pages alone in June 2002. This makes women 18-24 the most active audience group on the website with an OTS rating (Opportunity To See) factor three times higher than all adults combined.

Over the same period, 9.5% of all men aged 25-34 within the Internet universe had viewed these pages. Overall, a phenomenal 163 million page views were recorded for the Channel4.com domain in June 2002 compared with 41 million in May 2002, with an audience of 1.86 million in June 2002 compared to 1.46 million in May 2002.

Mark Brandon, Head of Interactive at Channel 4 comments 'Big Brother remains the ultimate cross-platform entity, with iterations in Web, WAP, interactive TV, SMS and Teletext all playing prominent parts in the overall story. This year we worked particularly hard to ensure our content offerings maximised the intrinsic strengths of each platform, and this research clearly shows that our audience understood this, responding particularly well to the inter-relationship we built between TV and the Internet. We remain committed to building on these successes in future years, and to providing increasingly relevant and interesting platforms for our advertising and sponsorship customers.'

Tim Roe, Senior Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings believes the findings of this latest research show how TV and Internet can be used together with fantastic results. 'Fans had a number of ways to become involved in the latest Big Brother series, and the Internet allowed them to experience more than they could as TV viewers. Rather than detracting from the TV viewing figures however, our research shows how fans were spending time during the day on the Internet seeking out the latest news and events in the house, then watching the programme at home on TV. The research shows that the Internet content, be it news, gossip or housemate profiles, whetted viewers appetites for the evening shows, helping keep audiences interested even when no big events were scheduled. For advertisers, this is a great case study in how to get your message across using media that can compliment, not compete, with each other. It's a real taster of what's to come in the future.'

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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